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Buyer Tips
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Here's an interesting trivia question: What's the number one
reason buyers of new homes cite for not recommending their
builder?
If you said the quality of the home, guess again. Sixty-eight
percent of new buyers said the humiliating sales process of
their builder soured them on the whole experience, according
to a Minnesota marketing research firm. And who can blame
them? Whether you're in Maine or Oregon, walk into any new
home community and the sales pitch is frighteningly similar.
Even Builder Magazine, the official mouthpiece of the National
Association of Home Builders, recognized this problem in a
recent article and described the typical sales process like
this:
"The hostess or sales associate greets the customer at
the sales office door. Then, like it or not, the prospects are
led to the topo table (the office's centerpiece) to get a
bird's-eye view of the community, hear a spiel on the
project's benefits and (to instill the first twinges of
urgency) see all the little red "sold" dots. Next,
the buyers are delicately grilled ('prequalified') about their
housing needs and pocket depth, then steered to the
wall-mounted floor plan the sales staffer judges they'd like
best. Then the prospects are released (or if it's a slow day,
accompanied) to the models."
"Back from the models (assuming they didn't climb over
the model trap's fence), the prospects are intercepted,
steered to the wall-mounted 'builders' story for another
canned spiel, then directed (or accompanied) to a lot.
Finally, the sales associate eases the prospects into a
cramped closing room to 'work up some numbers'- and to extract
a 'be-back' promise or contract." Sound familiar? The
only thing missing is a soundtrack blaring out Janet Jackson's
"Control." (I want to be the one... in control!)
That's what it's all about, after all-manipulating you both
physically (why do you think the models with the fence
attached is called a "model trap"?) and
psychologically. Builders are control freaks, who think the
only way to weed out tire-kickers is to treat all buyers like
a side of beef that's waiting to be processed.
There are some ways you can take control of the sales process
as a buyer. Here are some tips:
•Do your homework before you step into a model. Don't rely
on the canned "builder's story." Instead research
the builder at the local library- all public builders will
leave a trail of newspaper articles, both good and bad.
•Ask for the price lists and brochures up-front. Instead
of being led by the nose through the builder's model, insist
on seeing these documents first. That way you can tell if
you're truly interested or merely wasting both your and the
builder's time.
•Shop around. Not all builders are blind to this problem-
some actually have tried to make the sales process easier to
swallow. For example, at willow lake in North Aurora, IL,
United Development has life-sized plans on waterproof tarps-
buyers can walk through the plans to get an idea of different
layouts or to merely figure out how large that closet really
is. Other builders are making their models more interactive,
with freestanding displays of plumbing, windows, and other
details. By revealing what's going on behind the walls, you
can get a better read on the builder's quality.
This Homebuyers Tip was excerpted from:
Your New House,by Alan & Denise Fields,Windsor Press, 1996
ISBN# 0962655686
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